Jennifer Szalai

When the Clock Broke, Con Men, Conspiracists, and How America Cracked Up in the Early 1990s by John Gans.

When the Clock Broke, Con Men, Conspiracists, and How America Cracked Up in the Early 1990s by John Gans.

Hi, I'm Jennifer Salai, and I'm the nonfiction book critic for the New York Times Book Review. And a book I loved in 2024 was When the Clock Broke, Con Men, Conspiracists, and How America Cracked Up in the Early 1990s by John Gans. As somebody who grew up in the 1990s, you know, I had this idea of what the 1990s was. It was about Bill Clinton. It was about the end of the Cold War.

Hi, I'm Jennifer Salai, and I'm the nonfiction book critic for the New York Times Book Review. And a book I loved in 2024 was When the Clock Broke, Con Men, Conspiracists, and How America Cracked Up in the Early 1990s by John Gans. As somebody who grew up in the 1990s, you know, I had this idea of what the 1990s was. It was about Bill Clinton. It was about the end of the Cold War.

There was a sense of just sort of this bland consensus that was coalescing around the middle. This book just shows us that there was a bunch of just stranger, weirder stuff that was happening back then. You know, you have David Duke, who was a grand wizard of the KKK who thought he might become president. Ross Perot actually ran as a third-party candidate.

There was a sense of just sort of this bland consensus that was coalescing around the middle. This book just shows us that there was a bunch of just stranger, weirder stuff that was happening back then. You know, you have David Duke, who was a grand wizard of the KKK who thought he might become president. Ross Perot actually ran as a third-party candidate.

You know, you had these right-wing thinkers coming up with what was actually like an intellectual apparatus for the radical right. So when I first read the book in the summer, I was thinking, I think, of course, to the election ahead.

You know, you had these right-wing thinkers coming up with what was actually like an intellectual apparatus for the radical right. So when I first read the book in the summer, I was thinking, I think, of course, to the election ahead.

But no matter who was going to win in the November election this year, this is a book that will continue to be relevant and I think provides like an interesting light on the sort of bewildering moment that we live in.

But no matter who was going to win in the November election this year, this is a book that will continue to be relevant and I think provides like an interesting light on the sort of bewildering moment that we live in.